In Your Patience Possess Ye Your Souls

“In Your Patience Possess Ye Your Souls” (Luke 21:19)

President Henry J. Eyring

September 14, 2021

Thank you, Sister Eyring. Your message of optimism and faith is compelling because you personify it. You have lifted us.

Dear students, employees, and other friends of BYU-Idaho, welcome to the 2021 Fall Semester at Brigham Young University-Idaho. As Sister Eyring has said, she and I have eagerly awaited your arrival. Whether you are in Rexburg, Rhode Island, Rio, or somewhere in the rest of the world, you are in the right place for learning and for strengthening your testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This semester’s student enrollment is at nearly an all-time record in the history of BYU-Idaho, with both students on campus and in the rest of the world. Collectively, you are fulfilling the prophecy of Joseph Smith that “the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear; till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”1

Continuing Need for Good Judgment and Sacrifice

As you know, however, we have in our midst an unwelcome force, a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic. Having been long-suffering and patient during the past five semesters, it is natural to feel as though we have been caught in an unfair time warp, going back to the beginning of mandatory mask-wearing and encouragement to be vaccinated. Recently, medical experts are recommending booster shots.

Even more frustrating is a COVID-19 variant that seems to be intentionally targeted at young people. Though it’s true that vaccination rates are steadily rising, unvaccinated college-age students are at greater risk of infection than ever. For that reason, Sister Eyring and I hope that all members of our BYU-Idaho community will prayerfully consider the First Presidency’s urging to be vaccinated, for the sake of yourself and others.

In addition, the leaders of the university have, with approval of the Church Board of Education, determined to require masks in our campus buildings. Like you, I battle feelings of claustrophobia when wearing a mask. But I try to remember the greater good to be done for me and those with whom I gather.

Masks are not required when we are outside, due to the lessened risk of passing or receiving the virus out of doors. But our public health officials recommend masking in uncertain off-campus locations, such as apartment commons rooms. In addition, campus ecclesiastical leaders will give guidance designed to maintain your safety as you gather to worship and mingle as ward members.

A University-wide Fast and Meal

Additionally, our ecclesiastical leaders will oversee a special day of fasting to be followed by a meal provided by the university. On this coming Sunday, September 19, our University Food Services group, along with hundreds of volunteers, will distribute 25,000 meals to the apartments and other homes of our students. As in previous semesters, the recommended observation is a fast of just one meal, followed by the university-provided dinner.

I encourage you to eat together in your apartments and to have a structured discussion of actions that each person might take for the sake of having a protected and productive semester. Those actions might include vaccinating and deciding when and where face masks should be worn.

You could be blessed by a conversation about the things you’ll do for one another, temporally as well as spiritually and emotionally. In addition to creating plans for preventing a COVID-19 outbreak in your apartment, you could establish collective spiritual observances, such as apartment prayer and hosting ministering visits in a medically cautious way.

Pandemic and Patience

Let me praise you for your faith, patience, and optimism. Many of you have endured more than one semester of disappointment and hardship. Despite the best efforts of yourself, your roommates, university teachers, leaders of the Church, and your family, this has been a character-building and often frustrating time. Thank you for your steadfastness.

The experience of waiting longer than we would choose is typical of life’s hopes postponed. It is human nature to want straight, short paths to the realization of our dreams. However, our mortal existence is a divinely prepared opportunity to learn patience as we strive to improve. The word “wait” appears 154 times in the Old and New Testaments. Seven more references appear in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.

The scriptures showcase a who’s who of faithful, patient waiters. Elisabeth waited for the birth of John, the cousin of Jesus, long past the expected time of her fertility. Some gospel scholars suggest that Elisabeth was in her late 80s and Zacharias nearly 100 when John was finally born.

The Book of Mormon prophet Moroni was similarly patient. He received responsibility to safeguard and ultimately hide the many scriptural records that had been passed down from Nephite and other ancient prophets. Those records lay hidden for more than 1,400 years, until their location was revealed to Joseph Smith.

Even the Prophet Joseph, who received an outpouring of inspiration and guidance in restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ, had to wait for many important things to become clear and present. An example of that can be seen in the 130th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. On Christmas Day in 1832, Joseph wrote this:

I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following:

Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter.

I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face.

I believe the coming of the Son of Man will not be any sooner than that time.2

On our devotional discussion board, many of you shared your own experiences of being patient through hardships and then realizing great blessings. Joseph Kemper shared:

It was 12 years after my mission before I got married. It was not because I wasn’t dating or that I wanted to push off getting married, it was just how things happened. I was dating as regularly as I could, hoping to get married. As the years went on, I heard many talks directed toward young men about marriage and family (I remember one by President Hinckley in particular). As I looked at the lack of success I had in the dating world, I started to wonder what was wrong with me. From there, thanks to a prompting from the Spirit, I had a wonderful realization. I was and am a temple worthy and temple attending member of the Church who is entitled to all the blessings God is ready to give. Then came the wonderful realization that God just had a different timeline in mind for me which was just fine. I finally met my beautiful angel queen in 2011, and we have been happily married since 2012.

Divine Purpose

In all of these cases, as well as many others, there was divine purpose in the waiting. Given the age differences between Elisabeth and Mary, a miracle of both conception and patience was necessary to bring John and Jesus together as cousins of similar age and joint preachers of the gospel, two powerful prophetic witnesses for the Lord’s chosen people. The price of that, though, was the anguished hoping and waiting of Elisabeth and Zacharias.

Likewise, Moroni certainly wished he could share gospel truths that might turn some of his brethren and sisters back to the Lord. But he knew the risk of having the golden plates and other sacred records fall into the hands of men who would discard the gospel messages and melt down the plates for their own vain uses. Thus, Moroni spent the rest of his solitary life gathering and safe-guarding the divine writings.

Similarly, the Prophet Joseph had to suppress the natural desire to live long enough to see the Savior again in his lifetime. At the beginning of the Restoration of the gospel and the establishment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, miracles and divine communications flowed, as thousands of converts came to Zion. That was a time of joy and confidence, as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants:

As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.3”

Joseph must have been delighted by the possibility of living long enough to welcome the Savior to earth in his lifetime. But his ministry, though miraculous, proved to be shorter than he hoped. As Joseph and his fellow prisoners were taken to Carthage Jail, he sensed the Saints’ need for patience, declaring:

I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer’s morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men.4

Longsuffering Belief

By the end of Joseph’s life, he was a model of patience and longsuffering belief. But that doesn’t come naturally to most of us. In fact, it didn’t come easily even to Joseph.

The most confirmed believer can be shaken in his or her faith. That was the case for the Apostle Thomas. He was valiant in the cause of the gospel, to the point of risking his life. When the Savior’s dear friend Lazarus passed away, Thomas proposed going to comfort his grieving sisters, Mary and Martha. That came with grave risks, as the sisters lived near Jerusalem, where their Master had nearly been killed by a crowd intent on stoning Him. But Thomas was fearless and faithful, saying, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”5

Notwithstanding this zeal and bravery—and the reality of Lazarus’s miraculous revival—Thomas later struggled to believe that his Master had been resurrected following death on the cross. Even testimonials from Thomas’s apostolic colleagues couldn’t convince him. You will remember this verse in the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John:

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.6

Notwithstanding my lifetime of gospel instruction and nurturing, beginning with faithful parents and other trusted leaders, I sometimes find myself wavering between belief and skepticism. That wavering may be an inherent product of our physical bodies, which must withstand mortal dangers. In the natural world we are tempted to say, “Eat or be eaten,” and, “Survival of the fittest.”

A Bias for Patience

However, we should take care to guard against pessimism. Our minds and hearts must bridle our fears and human instincts. I’m grateful for William Shakespeare’s insights into those instincts. I particularly remember and appreciate the story of two friends, Julius Caesar and Marcus Junius Brutus, leaders of the Roman Empire in the decades leading up to the Savior’s birth. Caesar and

Brutus gradually fell prey to mutually negative feelings. They drifted apart and ultimately took up arms against one another. In the end, Brutus decided that time had run out, and that he and his outnumbered army needed to act quickly against Caesar’s forces. A millennium-and-a-half later, Shakespeare wrote these stirring lines for Brutus:

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.7

Both Brutus and Caesar came to sad ends. That was tragic for both of them and for Rome. Patience with one another might not have prevented more war, given the impatience of so many others with selfish motives. But, more often than not, time is on the side of all. Tempers tend to cool, and new insights emerge. As New York Yankee’s catcher and coach Yogi Berra often said of baseball games, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

The Reality of Progress

Having a bias for patience and optimism isn’t just a way for making ourselves feel happier. Notwithstanding the challenges and hardships of this life, the truth is that this world is getting better in many ways. Life expectancy has increased, even as poverty has declined.8 Healthcare has improved and become more accessible.9 War is less common.10 Democracy, while often messy and unpredictable, is increasing human freedom.11 Schools and education are spreading, thanks largely to technologies that seem to improve almost daily.12

The crucial challenge, though, is to learn to see more patiently and deeply, to look on the brighter, truer side of things. That’s hard to do, partly because the purveyors of news tend to emphasize negative events and unhappy people. Conversely, good news—such as kindness to family members, friends, and even strangers—is appreciated privately but rarely promoted publicly. The net effect is a tendency to see the world as generally competitive, selfish, and filled with strife and ill will.

This tendency isn’t just the creation of some news reporters. The fact is that our world is simultaneously strong yet delicate. That has been explained by researchers Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge this way:

There is a basic asymmetry in life between the positive, which is difficult and takes time, and the negative, which is much easier and takes less time—compare the amount of time needed to bring up and socialize an adult person and the amount of time needed to kill him in an accident, the amount of time needed to build a house and to destroy it in a fire, to make an airplane and crash it, and so on.13

The divine reality, though, is that Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ have created a world and universe which is predesigned and calculated to provide an ideal learning environment

for all of the children of God who accepted the Savior’s plan of happiness. You and I are blessed to be in a rich environment for developing individual capabilities and collaborating with other learners. There is no better time to be on earth, with greater things to come.

Transcending Our Adversary’s Subtle Stratagems

Of course, our spiritual adversary is working to spoil the learning and mastery we can attain in this life. Because of our advantaged circumstances, we must be wary of selfish ambitions. The influence of the Holy Ghost, which can supercharge our thoughts and powerfully guide our actions, cannot work on us unless our motives are pure and our thoughts are generous.

Joseph Smith knew that, and he was cautious to avoid mixed motives. Regrettably, I still struggle with the temptation to vainly hope for so-called “win-win” outcomes that are better for me than they are for others, as some early Latter-day Saints did. Over many years, and through many mistakes, I have learned something of what it means to be a good steward, working for the Lord and His kingdom, with selflessness and related confidence in ultimate success.

I’ve found some tips in this regard. One is to manage my mortal tendency to think, “What’s in this for me?” The moment I start down that mental path, the Holy Ghost departs. Yet, even when my motives are pure, I still face crises of confidence. Too often, when the going gets tough, my natural fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and takes control. At that point, the only sure response is to stand still while waiting for the Spirit’s direction.

Before responding to a perceived threat, I try to ask and answer the question, “Where is the action-forcing event?” I learned that technique in a law school course on negotiation. Unless immediate action is essential to prevent danger or the loss of an essential outcome, I try to avoid being in a hurry to make a decision and settle a matter.

In fact, long before law school, my mother taught me, “If you must have a decision immediately, the answer is, ‘No.’” Good decision-makers understand that time is usually on our side. Time is insight—not necessarily money, as many of us are tempted to say.

The Return of Our King

In conclusion, I challenge and bless you and me to stand in holy places, and not be moved until the Lord comes.14 On my best days, I patiently wait for the Spirit’s promptings to act, seeking peace of mind and heart. In Luke 21:19, Jesus counsels, “In your patience possess ye your souls.” Attempting to possess my soul gives me time to wait and see what Heaven has in store. That helps me sense the long-term trends, rather than reacting quickly to what appears to be either a happy windfall or threatening news.

When I continue in patience, warmth comes slowly but surely to my heart. In the beginning, there is just a spiritual smoldering. But, when nurtured, that smoldering finally begins to burn and a spiritual flame arises. Insight, both spiritual and intellectual, builds with time and experience; that is the way the Church and its members have grown.

Throughout the process, the Holy Ghost can soothe and strengthen. As we stand in holy places, He can warm our hearts and clarify our minds. The veil between heaven and our earthly realm is

a divine challenge to be hopeful. As we persevere patiently, insight will come slowly but surely, often in the course of humble trial and error.

The Savior’s ministry, conducted through prophets, parents, other leaders of the Church, and especially the Holy Ghost, is spreading and accelerating. As Christian writer C.S. Lewis has said, “Aslan is on the move.”15 As we stand patiently in holy places, we can indeed possess our souls. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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1 Joseph Smith, “The Wentworth Letter,” Liahona, Jun 1978, https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/1978/06/the-wentworth-letter?lang=eng.

2 Doctrine and Covenants 130:14–17.

3 Doctrine and Covenants 121:33.

4 Doctrine and Covenants 135:4.

5 John 11:16.

6 John 20:24–25.

7 Shakespeare, William. "Scene III. Brutus's Tent,” Julius Caesar, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/julius_caesar.4.3.html.

8 Nolan, Laura B., Jane Waldfogel, and Christopher Wimer. "Long-term trends in rural and urban poverty: New insights using a historical supplemental poverty measure." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 672, no. 1 (2017): 123-142.

9 Meskó, Bertalan, Zsófia Drobni, Éva Bényei, Bence Gergely, and Zsuzsanna Győrffy. "Digital health is a cultural transformation of traditional healthcare." Mhealth 3, 2017.

10 Spagat, Michael, and Stijn van Weezel. On the decline of war. No. WP18/15. UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series, 2018.

11 House, Freedom. "Freedom in the World 2020," 2020.

12 Raja, R., and P. C. Nagasubramani. "Impact of modern technology in education." Journal of Applied and Advanced Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 33-35.

13 Galtung, Johan, and Mari Holmboe Ruge. "The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers." Journal of Peace Research 2, no. 1 (1965): 64-90.

14 See Doctrine and Covenants 87:8.

15 Lewis, C. S. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, London: Collins, 1950.